Bomarzo

BOMARZO. - Ancient episcopal see of Latium, on the edge of the plateau that extends toward the Cimini Mountains and not far from the Tiber. In the Roman Synod of 649 a bishop subscribed with the title of "Ferentum Polymartium," while in those of 680 and 861 there appears simply a bishop of "Polymartium."

L. Duchesne would explain the successive designations by the transfer of the episcopal see from Ferento to B., which took place between the 6th and 7th centuries, because of the Lombard invasion. The bishop of Ferento would have withdrawn to B., a castle of his diocese subject to the Byzantines, and would have kept in his obedience the part that remained, while the other part would have been incorporated by another diocese under Lombard rule. Gams, on the other hand, would make B. a diocese of the 1st century, assigning to the year 69 its first bishop named Ptolemy, who is instead the same St. Ptolemy venerated at Sutri, called in his Passio, neither ancient nor authoritative, "episcopus Pentapolis et Tusciae" and placed by the same author under Claudius II (268-70). The same author places next in the series of bishops of B., at the year 545, a St. Anselm of whom we have a Vita (11th century: BHL, 542), containing contradictory chronological indications and commonplaces of medieval hagiography, which do not allow us to determine the age of the bishop, who lived, if ever, long after 545, given, as F. Lanzoni observes, his Germanic name. After 1015 there is no further record of any bishop of B.

Benedetto Pesci